E. X.

Claudette is an amazing dialect coach. She’s the only dialect coach I have ever been to. She has been extremely helpful and absolutely amazing.

Our goal was to reduce my Chinese accent. Over the course of 9 sessions over Skype, Claudette sent me customized comments and exercises for me to improve my pronunciation.

She has this amazing ear that can pinpoint each single problem I had. And she’s also really great at demonstrating how to improve my pronunciation by showing me visual demonstrations, graphs, as well as vocal exercises. Another great thing is that she is very familiar with a lot of the common mistakes made by Chinese speakers when they speak English.

In between classes, I practiced by reading through the word and sentence lists that we went through in the previous class. I also incorporated all the comments and tips in my everyday speech. Another thing, I try to remember the physical movement in my mouth, especially when I pronounce a sound correctly, so that I can replicate it later. Eventually it will all come down to muscle memory.

After the training I definitely feel more confident in social and professional situations, especially when I meet new people or when I’m a little bit nervous. A lot of my friends have said that they can hear the differences when I speak now.

I definitely think it’s worth it. It’s a great experience and a lot of fun.